I run Slam Media Lab (Slam), an award-winning digital marketing agency based in San Francisco working with mission-driven companies to go BIG online. I have 10+ years of experience working with nonprofits of all sizes–organizations who just set-up their 501(c)(3) status to larger ones with millions of dollars in budget. No matter their size, they have all asked me the same question: “Silvia, how can I use AI or ChatGPT to help my nonprofit work more efficiently?”
The reason? No matter how much money the nonprofit has raised or how many resources they have, these nonprofits are overwhelmed. They need the support. You need the support.
Here’s where AI tools like ChatGPT come in clutch for your nonprofit.
Many of the tasks you and your team do can be resolved in minutes, even seconds instead of weeks. When we partnered with our nonprofit clients to teach them how to use ChatGPT in their workflow, they knew this would be life changing. They saw how all their workflows could change immediately.
From crafting personalized comms from anybody on your team, to training ChatGPT to know your nonprofit’s values, tone, and voice, to data analysis, to fundraising, we believe that nonprofits are missing out if they’re not using ChatGPT in their workflow. At Slam, every single staff member uses it. I even used it to brainstorm for this article to catch my blind spots and do additional research.
I wrote this article to bridge the gap you have to get started. I’ll share real-life examples from our clients, practical strategies, and easy-to-follow templates to help your nonprofit seamlessly integrate ChatGPT. Let’s dive in!
How Does ChatGPT Work?
If you’re new to artificial intelligence and ChatGPT, think of it as a supercharged assistant that can understand and generate human-like text. Powered by advanced machine learning, ChatGPT can:
- Understand Context: It can comprehend the context of your questions, queries or commands.
- Generate Content: Whether you need an email draft, social media post, or a comprehensive report, ChatGPT can create it for you with your voice or tone.
- Analyze Data: Feed it your data, and it can identify patterns, generate insights, and even predict trends.
- Automate Tasks: From scheduling meetings to drafting responses, ChatGPT can handle repetitive tasks for your nonprofit, freeing up your time for more critical activities.
- Building Custom Solutions: ChatGPT is highly customizable, allowing you to build on top of it to create specialized tools and applications tailored to your nonprofit’s needs.
- Creating Bots: You can develop chatbots with ChatGPT to handle tasks like answering common questions, engaging with website visitors, and guiding volunteers or donors through processes.
And if you don’t know what machine learning (ML) is, it’s a type of AI where a computer learns from data. Imagine teaching a kid to recognize flowers by showing them pictures of different flowers and telling them the names. Over time, this kid learns to identify flowers on their own. ML works similarly. The computer is given lots of data and learns to recognize patterns and make decisions based on that data.
ChatGPT is part of a broader category of AI called Large Language Models (LLMs). To understand how ChatGPT works, it's important to understand what they are.
ChatGPT and Large Language Models (LLMs) explained
An LLM is a type of AI that has been trained to understand and generate human-like text based on all the data from the internet. Think of it as a super smart robot that can read, write, and understand language very much like a human can. These models are "large" because they are trained on billions of words and phrases from books, websites, learning the patterns and structures of human language.
When you interact with ChatGPT, it uses its training to generate text. For example, if you ask it a question, it predicts the most likely and relevant response based on the patterns it learned during training.
One of the powerful features of ChatGPT is its ability to understand context. This means it can carry on a conversation, remembering what was said earlier and responding in a way that has that context.
Who owns ChatGPT? Who created it?
ChatGPT is developed by OpenAI, a for-profit and nonprofit AI research organization founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, and Wojciech Zaremba. The OpenAI main goal was to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity.
OpenAI started as a nonprofit, but later transitioned to a "capped-profit" model with the creation of OpenAI LP, a for-profit entity governed by the non-profit parent company, OpenAI Inc. This structure allows OpenAI to raise money while staying true to its mission. The capped-profit model ensures that the returns on this investment are limited, with any excess profits reinvested in OpenAI's mission. This unique setup allows OpenAI to balance its research goals with financial sustainability.
What’s ChatGPT’s pricing?
OpenAI offers different pricing tiers for accessing ChatGPT, catering to various user needs:
- Free Tier: This provides access to the basic features of ChatGPT with some usage limitations. It's a great option for individuals and small organizations looking to explore the capabilities of ChatGPT without any cost.
- ChatGPT Plus: Priced at $20 per month, this plan offers several benefits over the free tier, including general access even during peak times, faster response times, and priority access to new features and improvements. This plan is ideal for users who require more reliable and efficient performance. We use this at Slam, and share an account!
- API Access: For organizations looking to integrate ChatGPT into their applications, OpenAI offers API access with pricing based on usage. The API pricing is usage-based, typically calculated by the number of tokens processed (both input and output). This option is suitable for businesses and developers who want to build on top of ChatGPT or use it for extensive tasks.
- Enterprise Solutions: For larger organizations with specific needs, OpenAI provides custom pricing and solutions. These solutions are tailored to the unique requirements of the organization, including higher usage limits, dedicated support, and more advanced features.
How ChatGPT is Affecting Nonprofits [Examples]
It already is. Here’s how:
- Improving communications and outreach
- Streamlining internal operations
- Accelerating your fundraising process
- Managing volunteers better
- Launching new tools and resources
- Analyzing data sets, reports, and spreadsheets
Improving communications and outreach
ChatGPT can significantly improve how you communicate with your stakeholders. It can draft personalized emails, thank-you notes, and social scripts.
Nonprofits like Good360 are using AI-powered chatbots to engage with website visitors, providing real-time assistance and nurturing potential supporters.
Streamlining internal operations
Many admin tasks that your nonprofit finds annoying and time consuming can now be automated with ChatGPT. This includes summarizing a financial report, data entry, scheduling, and drafting routine communications, freeing up staff to focus on higher-impact activities.
For example, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has partnered with IQ-AI Limited to develop AI models for analyzing pediatric imaging datasets. The goal of this partnership is to improve diagnostic quality without the need for contrast agents, enhancing patient care and potentially increasing donor engagement through impactful success stories.
Accelerating your nonprofit fundraising process
ChatGPT can help tailor fundraising campaigns by analyzing donor data to predict giving patterns and segmenting donors for targeted outreach. This personalized approach can lead to higher donation rates and better donor retention.
The Trevor Project used AI to analyze donor data, predict trends, and personalize outreach, resulting in increased donor engagement and higher donation amounts. By crafting targeted emails and messages, they were able to reach the right donors with the right message, boosting their fundraising efforts significantly.
Managing volunteers better
AI tools like ChatGPT can significantly enhance the management of volunteers by automating tasks and improving engagement.
One of our nonprofit clients uses ChatGPT and Zapier to send reminders about upcoming shifts, providing training materials, and collecting feedback. This helps keep volunteers informed and engaged, reducing the administrative burden on staff and allowing for more effective volunteer coordination.
Launching new tools and resources
With AI, you can train your own model so people can use a bot or a resource you’ve built that has all the contextual information from your nonprofit.
The Trevor Project launched an AI tool called “Crisis Contact Simulator” to support crisis counselor training, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their training programs. This AI-driven simulation tool creates lifelike conversations to help counselors practice handling crisis situations. Counselors can now prepare before engaging in real-life scenarios. This tool was named TIME’s Best Inventions in 2021.
Analyzing data sets, reports, and spreadsheets
Nonprofits collect vast amounts of data, from donor information to program outcomes. ChatGPT can help analyze this data to provide actionable insights, identify trends, and improve program effectiveness.
For example, THINK South Africa trains public health professionals to use ChatGPT for cleaning, analyzing, and interpreting health data. Historically, public health decision-makers have been limited by time and expertise, which restricted effective data usage for resource allocation. Initially, everybody was hesitant. But with time, they saw its power and are moving much faster.
Our nonprofit clients use it to ask questions and see if they’re missing any key points in their financials, reports, etc. Here’s an example:
https://www.loom.com/share/4ddb40ca915a484c972605ff3feb86f0?sid=62e27f18-901b-4d13-a163-fd531e73fdae
Creating content for your nonprofit
With ChatGPT, you can use its audio feature on mobile to brainstorm, talk about your ideas, and have it come up with an editorial content calendar in minutes. Plus, if you want it to come up with copy that has your nonprofit’s tone, you can train it to do so.
Below is an example of how we used audio to give ChatGPT instructions to come up with a sample calendar.
If you’re looking for a place to manage your content efficiently, check out our two calendars, made to keep you and the whole MarComms team organized:
Translation to any language
If your nonprofit targets multilingual audiences like our client Microsoft’s Community Skills Initiative, then chatGPT will come in clutch. ChatGPT is perfect for that.
For more specialized website translations, we use specific tools like Weglot, but for general translation tasks, ChatGPT excels.
- Weglot for Websites: For the websites we design and build at Slam on Webflow, we use Weglot to automatically translate website content into multiple languages using AI. This ensures accessibility and inclusivity for all visitors by providing accurate and contextually appropriate translations. Weglot makes it easier for nonprofits to reach a global audience without the hassle of manual translations.
- ChatGPT for General Translation: Like I mentioned earlier, LLMs are trained on vast amounts of data, allowing ChatGPT to understand context, nuances, and the subtleties of different languages. This makes it exceptionally good at providing quick and reliable translations that are both accurate and culturally appropriate. This is how ChatGPT ensures that your translations maintain the intended meaning and tone. You can even take a screenshot of what you want to transcribe and it’s able to read the text of the image. See the example below.
Crisis response and management
In times of crisis, having a well-prepared plan is important to mitigate damage. One powerful way to leverage AI in crisis management is by training a ChatGPT bot with best practices. This allows you to have an expert advisor at your fingertips during critical moments. You’ll get quick advice on whether your draft messages meet best practices and ensure that your responses are appropriate and effective.
To make the most out of ChatGPT in crisis situations, you can train it with comprehensive crisis management guidelines. This includes information from your PR team, best practices from trusted sources, and any specific protocols your organization follows.
Here’s how you can do it:
- Compile best practices: Gather best practices from reliable PR sources. This includes steps like gathering information, being honest, crafting appropriate messages, and reacting swiftly.
- Train ChatGPT: Feed this information into ChatGPT. You can include:some text
- Response protocols: Instructions on how to gather and verify information during a crisis.
- Communication Strategies: Guidelines on crafting messages that align with your nonprofit's values and maintain transparency.
- Role Definitions: Clear roles and responsibilities for team members during a crisis, including who should be the spokesperson.
- Simulate Crisis Scenarios: Regularly conduct simulations where ChatGPT is used to review and critique responses. This helps refine its advice and ensures that your team is prepared for real situations.
- Include good and bad examples: Train ChatGPT with examples of both effective and ineffective crisis responses. This helps the AI understand what is a good response versus a poor one.
Notetaking summaries
At Slam, we use Fathom AI to help us automatically take notes on all calls. I then copy the transcription and drop if to ChatGPT to ask it questions or pull quotes from the conversation! I even have train it to write me an email with action items from the call. Fathom is free!
If you’re looking for AI nonprofit training, we specialize in helping nonprofits leverage AI and ChatGPT in their workflow. Reach out here!
ChatGPT Nonprofit Best Practices and Tips
To make the most of ChatGPT in your nonprofit operations, it's important to follow some best practices. Here are key strategies to ensure effective use:
Be specific in your prompting
When giving instructions to ChatGPT, be as detailed as possible. The more specific your prompt, the better the response you'll get. For instance, instead of asking, "Help with a fundraising email," specify, "Draft a fundraising email for our annual gala, highlighting our new scholarship program. The tone should be professional, uplifting, and conversational. It should mention the following: where it will be hosted, time, our goal and vision. Here’s an example of last year’s fundraiser. I want to make sure we don’t miss [detail A, detail B, detail C]."
Using GPT-4 (paid version)
It’s worth it, because you can browse the internet in real-time. The paid version of ChatGPT allows you to browse the internet in real-time, making it a powerful tool for up-to-date information and research. Use this feature to transfer data, read the latest reports, reference information, and integrate new information into your strategies.
Use screenshots to reference things
If you want to move fast, take screenshots of documents or information you need translated or summarized. ChatGPT can read text from images, allowing for quick and efficient data handling.
Continue training it with your nonprofit’s information
To continually train ChatGPT with your nonprofit’s specific information, you can start a new chat session and feed it updated data. This includes uploading documents, adding attachments, adding transcripts, and inputting specific details about your nonprofit's operations, protocols, and communications.
Slam’s ChatGPT for Nonprofits Coaching and Training
At Slam, nonprofit ops and marketing are our bread and butter. We are your partners, not just service providers. We’ve worked extensively with dozens of nonprofits like SEAL, Community Solutions, Equis Labs, Eye to Eye, Fresh Approach, and more.
Our expertise spans web development, content creation, SEO, operations, and design, allowing us to deliver tailored solutions that drive impact. Here’s how we help nonprofits leverage AI:
- Audit All your workflows: We begin by thoroughly auditing your current workflows to identify areas where AI can make a significant impact. This includes evaluating your communication processes, data management, and daily operations to pinpoint inefficiencies.
- Provide recommendations: Based on our audit, we offer detailed recommendations on integrating AI into your workflows. This includes suggestions for automating repetitive tasks, enhancing data analysis, and improving stakeholder communication.
- Build custom bots: We help you design and implement custom ChatGPT bots tailored to your specific needs. These bots can handle tasks such as answering frequently asked questions, managing volunteer schedules, and personalizing donor communications.
- Training and adoption: We provide comprehensive training to ensure your team is comfortable and proficient with the new AI tools. Our training sessions cover best practices, effective prompting techniques, and strategies for ongoing learning and adaptation.
Ready to transform your nonprofit with ChatGPT? Let us know!
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